The Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment (iSEE) encourages and supports faculty from diverse disciplines to investigate solutions to the challenges associated with a sustainable future. 

Our research requires interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing the brightest of the bright together to solve the world’s current and future problems. We call it “actionable research” — that is, scientific progress toward real-world solutions that can have an immediate and/or lasting impact on the world we live in.

As a twin-cities campus, one of the university’s greatest assets is its proximity to strong communities. Our history of climate resilience proves that time and again, we benefit from mutual support; this has also been true as each community has taken proactive measures to increase resilience to COVID-19. Though Champaign, Urbana, Savoy, and the University are independent entities, we are all immeasurably stronger when functioning as a unit.

While the 2017 Campus Master Plan provides an overall vision for a sustainable campus, the plan prioritizes buildings over landscapes. There is no cohesive vision for resilient campus landscapes and limited guidelines for ensuring landscapes’ long-term success. F&S is developing a Landscape Master Plan including a shared vision for the overall campus landscape and specific design guidelines. This will include establishing a steering committee, hiring an external landscape architecture firm, and initiating extensive public and stakeholder engagement.

The Illinois Science and Energy Innovation Foundation (ISEIF) was created to inform and engage Illinois consumers in the transformation to a digital electric grid. ISEIF accomplishes this through funding innovative education, outreach, and research projects in correspondence with smart meter deployment timelines.

The Champaign County Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan (CCHMP) identifies and prioritizes community policies, actions and tools to implement in order to reduce potential risk and potential for future losses associated with the occurrence of selected natural and technical hazards. The CCHMP is developed to be useful to each participating jurisdiction. The plan can be used to increase awareness of potential natural hazards and technical hazards; and to understand potential losses from hazard events.

The Campus Transportation Advisory Committee (CTAC) is an advisory body to Transportation Demand Management (TDM) at Facilities & Services (F&S) and the campus community on matters relating to campus transportation.

The iCAP 2020 objective 3.2 is to "Increase the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) for university-owned roads so the average PCI score is at least 65 by FY25 and at

It is essential to have proper maintenance and management of roads to keep the emissions down. A complete overhaul or new construction requires substantially higher funding, labor, engineering, as well as natural resources, among other resources as compared to regular preventive maintenance.

Facilities and Services interns proposed an initiative that could help increase awareness of the program ECIP and the iCAP commitment to reduce energy consumption of buildings and create a more sustainable campus. Through the new ECIP Championship Challenge leaders in buildings would:

The College of Fine & Applied Arts incorporated the disciplines of design, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban and regional planning to create this new undergraduate major. Students will experience an innovative and interdisciplinary course of study which will focus on the places, things, systems, and policies needed to help solve problems in a sustainable society.